Computing devices are being utilized to perform an ever-increasing number of tasks, some of which involve a user entering and/or storing private or sensitive data, such as when performing online banking transactions, making an online purchase or monitoring personal finances. Consequently, protection of such data from exploitation is becoming an increasingly important issue. On many software platforms, users are allowed to install software. This is problematic in that a user may unintentionally install a rogue application, which can compromise the security of both the software platform and the user's sensitive data. To some extent, such applications can be “sandboxed” to prevent them from accessing certain data and resources. However, by their very nature, rogue applications are almost always given access to a display of the computing device. This presents the potential problem of a rogue application spoofing the appearance of a legitimate or trusted application and soliciting sensitive data from a user, such as passwords or credit card numbers, which can then be exploited.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a method for enabling a trusted dialog for collection of sensitive data, which allows a user to have increased confidence that any input data is being collected by an application with a legitimate need for such data.